Can the Air Force use your taxpayer dollars to host drag shows?
Briana Oser
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In a late May House Armed Services Committee meeting about the 2024 Department of Defense budget, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) asked Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin: “How much taxpayer money should go to fund drag queen story hours on military bases?”
The event, which was to take place in the library at the Ramstein Air Force base in Germany on June 2, was canceled.
Gaetz then raised several other examples of drag queen events at Air Force bases all sponsored by the Defense Department: another drag queen story hour for kids at a base in Montana, drag appearances at a “kid-friendly” DEI summer festival at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, and an upcoming drag show called “Drag-u-Nellis” at the Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
Austin responded: “Drag shows are not something that the Department of Defense supports or funds.” Despite Gaetz’s substantial evidence that drag events are, in fact, happening on military bases, Austin insisted that drag queen events are not funded or endorsed by the DoD. When Gaetz presented an image of a drag queen story time poster that displayed DoD insignia, Austin still denied the DoD’s support.
Gaetz then posed a question to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, about the DoD’s DEI initiatives. Milley seemed clueless about a racist tweet from the department’s DEI chief and about the White Privilege book that the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion sent out for circulation in schools. To his credit, he stated later that he did not agree with hosting drag events and that he would like to reexamine the issue after the meeting.
According to NBC News, Milley and Austin have canceled the drag show that was supposed to occur on June 1 at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh told CNN: “Per DoD Joint Ethics Regulation (JER), certain criteria must be met for persons or organizations acting in non-Federal capacity to use DoD facilities and equipment. As Secretary Austin has said, the DoD will not host drag events at U.S. military installations or facilities. Hosting these types of events in federally funded facilities is not a suitable use of DoD resources.”
The DoD’s endorsement of drag shows is a mockery of the Air Force, where brave men and women train rigorously and prepare to put their lives on the line. An Air Force base is a place of seriousness and discipline. Not of debaucherous behavior and sexy entertainment.
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This seems to be the most sensical response to drag queens flaunting around military bases — they stand in stark contrast to the atmosphere of the environment. Isn’t it comical to imagine fit, clean-cut men and women in uniforms crowded around men in scanty clothes wiggling their fake breasts? Even more grotesque and strange is the same crowd reading picture books to small children at an Air Force base.
The other question, which Singh addresses, is about taxpayer dollars. As she rightly points out, the DoD is not able to federally fund drag shows. That drag events were approved by the DoD and brought onto military bases is a scandal because it involves the wages of American citizens. Even if the DoD did not host the drag shows federally, they still violate the DoD’s ethical criteria. The hyper-sexualized drag culture and the rigorous nature of the Air Force belong to different worlds.
Briana Oser is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.